When to buy Silver chests?

[JC]

if you buy silver chests does it give you a random chest for all the base characters or just the ones you are using? It shows some as larger, then a list of characters.,

I watched some guy's stream earlier today and he said to get silver chests, i just didn't know if it was totally random, or if i should buy them in a certain way. aka having the people i want to use in the party and active?

[Sapwn]

Silver chests can only ever drop gear for so called "evergreen" champions. These are the champions you start out with (plus a few you will get later on). These chests will only drop gear for champions you have, no need for them to be active.

Pesonally, i would never buy silver chests. If you are very new, i would focus on getting the first few clickers and then gold chests.

[tdb]

Never buy silver chests. They can't give epic (purple) gear and only have a 3% chance (IIRC) to give rare (blue) gear. Gold chests are much better since they always give at least one piece of rare gear and every 10 chests you're guaranteed to get a piece of epic gear (and you may randomly get extra epics).

Definitely buy at least the cheap familiars before even considering any chests though. Some feats are also very useful, particularly those which enable a champion to be used for a patron or a variant, or those which boost speed abilities.

[Jack]

Never buy silver chests.

[JC]

well apparently the stuff is random to all base characters.. But i was watching this guys stream earlier today and he was saying it's better to have base gear on your characters before opening gold boxes because it removes the chance of a lower lvl item from dropping.

He goes on to talk about why in this guide. Are you saying he is wrong about that stuff?

https://www.reddit.com/r/idlechampions/comments/zxp3n5/items_101_an_introduction/

[tdb]

Originally posted by JC:

But i was watching this guys stream earlier today and he was saying it's better to have base gear on your characters before opening gold boxes because it removes the chance of a lower lvl item from dropping.

It doesn't affect the rarities of what you get from the chests at all. What it does affect is the chance of getting duplicates of higher rarity. Every chest is guaranteed to give at least one upgrade if possible, but that upgrade may be of any rarity. So if you're still missing some uncommon (green) gear, a gold chest might give you an uncommon item as an upgrade to a common (white) one, while also giving you a rare item which is a duplicate of something you already had.

Because of that upgrade mechanic, it makes sense to save any gold chests until you have mostly uncommon gear on all applicable champions. That doesn't make silver chests worth buying though. You randomly get them from defeating bosses, which should get you some basic gear soon enough.

There's also electrum chests to be had from codes on various Twitch streams. Check https://incendar.com/idlechampions_codes.php if you don't want to watch the streams yourself.

[JC]

Ohh ok. that makes since, but seeing the cost of stuff people were saying to buy, i don't think spending 500 coins did much of a dent when i see something that costs 50k lol. Any ways those chests did happen to give me like 4 items for my DPS guy so at least it ended up being kinda helpful.

I did finally get a chest from a random boss finally. I did that time event thing and after i am doing a free play to 50, so i guess that is how you get them?

I've done the mad wizard quest, then the beast quest, and i went past it to lvl 75 but it was just slowing down to much so i ended that and did the portal thing where i got the hero kyrdle, and i singed up for that mailer that gives you something once a week and hitch i think his name is.

is there anything else i should know about how to get some gear and heroes to help me along?

[Quoth the Raven]

Please see this guide:
https://imgur.com/a/P46rzj9

Basically, start with silver till all evergreen champs have at least green gear, switch to gold till everybody is full epic, than switch back to silver to shiny your gear.

Later on, but this will take some time, you need to balance silver/gold. Gold gives you more contracts but you also need small speed potions. There's a spreadsheet somewhere calculating the best ratio, but I usually just open a couple of thousand silver chests when the stock is running low.

[Wyndfoot]

Never buy the silver chests, you will get plenty of them from drops off bosses. Save your gems for gold chests, feats and familiars if needed.

[Quoth the Raven]

Originally posted by Wyndfoot:

Never buy the silver chests, you will get plenty of them from drops off bosses. Save your gems for gold chests, feats and familiars if needed.

No, that's simply not correct. The guide/chart from Mars outlines the best strategy to buy stuff.

[tdb]

Originally posted by Quoth the Raven:

No, that's simply not correct. The guide/chart from Mars outlines the best strategy to buy stuff.

Yeah, because clearly a guide from three years ago continues to be the One True Way to play the game and anything else must be incorrect.

It does seem true that silver chests grant more item levels per gems spent. As a trial I opened 100 of both and got 161 item levels from silver chests and 1184 from gold. But gold chests are 10x more expensive, so silver chests were better by about a third. Additionally shinies are based in item count, not levels, so silver chests excel in that regard.

But wait, how many evergreen champions do I have in my current main formation? Not that one, not that one, not this one either... That's right, I don't have any. So what use would the item levels for evergreen champions be to me(*)? If I got enough shinies they would start dropping potions of polish instead, but that takes a lot of chests.

Meanwhile the 100 gold chests also gave me 110 item levels worth of blacksmithing contracts, which I can apply to any champion I choose. That's way more useful to me than evergreen champion gear. I also got four feats, though I don't recall if I'm missing anything important.

*) Gearing up Jarlaxle and Makos would be useful for trials, but that's another biiiig project.

[kab_reg]

Asharra as the main DPS is still an option, although Artemis is better in the long run.

[tdb]

Originally posted by kab_reg:

Asharra as the main DPS is still an option, although Artemis is better in the long run.

Sure, I used her myself until recently, although everyone else in her formation was from events. I guess I could have mentioned that. But the gear drop from silver and gold chests go to random champions out of 20 evergreens. So out of 1000 silver chests Asharra would have gained about 80 item levels on average. The equivalent gem value in gold chests would have given about 50 item levels to Asharra from the random drops. Add the 110 item levels from contracts and the total is 160, double that of silver chests. Or you could spend the contracts on a non-evergreen support champion, which is likely the better choice.

New players don't have all 20 evergreens unlocked yet. I'm assuming everyone signs up for the newsletter to get Hitch, and also unlocks at least Drizzt before buying chests becomes relevant, so there's 14 eligible champions. That puts the numbers at 115 for silver and 85+110 for gold, so gold chests still win if you want to focus on one champion.

My Asharra formation uses four champions which were not available when that guide was written, and four more which have been heavily reworked in seasons. My Artemis formation has three and five. So it's possible that at the time evergreen champions really were used enough that silver chests were the better option. But I really don't think they are now.

[Quoth the Raven]

Originally posted by tdb:

Originally posted by Quoth the Raven:

No, that's simply not correct. The guide/chart from Mars outlines the best strategy to buy stuff.

Yeah, because clearly a guide from three years ago continues to be the One True Way to play the game and anything else must be incorrect.

The claim was: "Never buy the silver chests". And this is simply not correct.

Buying silver chests has several uses. The guide from Mars is still quite valid.

Granted, it's worth has decreased somewhat since you can choose, who is affected by shiny potions. That was one of the major reasons for getting everyone shiny, so that such a potion must hit an event champ.

And yes, silver chests give more ilevels:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GRu8lCRD7SkUuDACN-SjAC9HRmshanelfeldYFMteNo/edit#gid=2118575812

[kab_reg]

Originally posted by tdb:

Sure, I used her myself until recently, although everyone else in her formation was from events.

I also use Bearyl when I need the second frontline tank (or just a source of extra health).

[tdb]

Originally posted by Quoth the Raven:

Buying silver chests has several uses. The guide from Mars is still quite valid.

Can you explain to me, in your own words, what's so great about buying silver chests? Because the reasons stated by the guide seem outdated. It says: "Finally, move back to silver chests to most efficiently grind for more item levels and shiny gear."

The gear levels from silver chests are not useful because they're for evergreen champions only. Unless you use four or more evergreens in your main formation, it's more efficient to use gold chests and the blacksmith contracts from them (see numbers in my previous post, though I recognize 100 chests is a fairly small sample size).

Shiny items from silver chests are similarly only for evergreens. Presumably they'll eventually start giving potions of polish, but that's a big project and has a large opportunity cost. You need 120 shinies, and at about one shiny per 1000 opened chests that means 120000 silver chests, which costs 6 million gems. Then you'd need another 60000 chests to get the potions of polish to shiny up your main team of event champions.

If you instead bought gold chests you'd have gotten about 20k levels worth of blacksmith contracts. That's enough to increase a single champion's average item level by over 3000, or a full team by over 300. If you didn't have much item levels before, that would more than double the bonuses from the items, which is better than the 50% from making them shiny (but without extra levels).

There does eventually come a point at which farming the shinies is worth it. Once your main team has item levels around 400, adding another 300 from contracts results in less than a 50% increase in power, while shinies are always a 50% boost. So I concede that you should not quite never buy silver chests, but would like to note that by the time someone has level 400 items for their main team they probably won't need to ask about it.